Vessel
Sixteen-year-old Paige has one chance to escape an arranged marriage to a boy in her post-apocalyptic cult: by becoming its human sacrifice. In that role, the souls of her neighbors rest in her hands, but she's starting to doubt her ability to deliver them to the afterlife. Not when she doesn't know what to do with the inappropriate sexual attraction she's feeling toward another girl-her best friend, Mott. Not when Paige knows she's not pure, that they chose the wrong girl.
When her brother gets himself arrested and Mott follows suit, Paige finds her beliefs crumbling. Powerless to help them directly, she joins a resistance group and takes on the unthinkable: assassinating the religion's leader. Caught between bad and worse, Paige must choose between the strict, zealous love their religion preaches, or fighting for the freedom to search for her own version of "home"-even though she might never find it.
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"A parable and a dystopian tale all in one, VESSEL is everything you love about your favorite post-apocalyptic cults wrapped up in a pacy, eerie package. For those of us who came up on THE GIVER and now inhale documentaries like Keep Sweet, Pray, and Obey, VESSEL will pull you into its closer-to-possible-than-you'd-like world and refuse to let you go. Make sure you set aside the time to read this in one sitting; you'll need it."
-Amanda Quain, author of Accomplished, Ghosted, and Dashed
"New Standard might be a post-apocalyptic cult, but the groundwork for the religious group in Rie Lee's VESSEL is anything but speculative. Fans of The Giver and The Handmaid's Tale will find similar real-world struggles in queer Ritualist Paige, who, as she waits to be sacrificed for the good of her people, must grapple with a choice she didn't even know she could make: Ascend, or escape."
-Kelly Ann Jacobson, author of Tink and Wendy and Lies of a Toymaker
"In Vessel, Rie Lee has created a piercing, beautifully rendered story of a young woman trapped between the demands of a rigid, post-apocalyptic society and her own awakening desires. A love story wrapped in a dystopian thriller tucked into a coming-of-age tale, Vessel hooks you immediately and moves with relentless, bristling tension toward its powerful conclusion."
-Shawn Vestal, winner of the PEN Robert W. Bingham Prize and author of Daredevils and Godforsaken Idaho
